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Cold War

In the immediate aftermath of WWII, the world was split into two opposing camps that, though they did not fight directly, were actively engaged in the Cold War. This war did not end until the USSR broke apart in 1991. The Cold War was both created and prolonged by the interconnected economic and ideological tensions of the East and West Blocs. The ideological systems of the two powers were viewed as being complete opposites in their goals and experienced increasing animosity toward each other. This in turn influenced the economic policies that drove the main powers of the Cold War even further apart. By far, the biggest contributor to the formation of the Cold War was the fact that both sides believed the communist Soviet Union and the capitalist west ideologies were incompatible with each other. The essence of the Cold War was seen as the opposition of communism and capitalism. This belief was present as soon as 1946, when Winston Churchill gave a speech characterizing the Soviet Union as a government that was capable of trying to “enforce totalitarian systems upon the free democratic world”. He also contrasted the Soviet Union as a state where control was “enforced upon the common people by… police governments,” while the U.S. and Great Britain embodied “the great principles of freedom and the rights of man”. This belief did not abate as the Cold War dragged on, and caused even more animosity between the two blocs. Even as late as 1961, Khrushchev’s address to the Communist Party Congress still proclaimed the main driving force of the Soviet Union to be the “competition of the two world social systems, the socialist and the capitalist” This perceived ideological incompatibility also contributed to the formation of alliances in the East and West blocs. These alliances in turn prolonged the Cold War. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was first formed in 1949 as protection of capitalist countries from the USSR, and it was still bringing countries into its membership all the way up until Spain’s entrance in 1982. The Soviets responded to this with yet another alliance group in Eastern Europe, the Warsaw Pact. Former colonies were also forced to choose an allegiance with either the capitalist or communist camps. This expanded the reach of the Cold War to the entire world, instead of just Western Europe and the U.S. and the USSR. Many of the economic tensions that contributed to the start of the Cold War were in fact caused by the ideological differences of the East and West. The partition of Germany serves as a prime example of how the differing economic policies of the East and West led to the Cold War. As a capitalist system, the United States wanted to use American capitol to invest in Germany and create a stronger economy within the country. On the other hand, the Soviet Union sought to rebuild their own country through the use of German resources. These two competing theories on the future of the German economy were the primary reason for the Berlin blockade and the eventual split of the country between capitalist West Germany and Communist East Germany. With the capitalist economy of West Berlin being administered by the US, France, and Great Britain, the Soviet Union enacted the blockade as a protection of their German economic policies. This blockade and subsequent division served as a literal example of the separation between the East and West that had taken place and became the Cold War. The different economic paths taken by the East and West also served to create conditions that prolonged the Cold War. To the West of the Iron Curtain, consumerism came to be the driving force of the economy. Over the years following WWII, the economy in the West began to flourish and grow much faster than in the Soviet Union. In fact, the prosperity of West Berlin was so enticing to East Berliners, that in 1961 the soviet government built the Berlin Wall to stem the extreme rate of immigration of their workers to West Berlin....

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...The ColdWar (1945-1991) was basically an ideological standoff between the ideas of Communism supported by the Russians and Democracy/Capitalism supported by the Americans. Communism is a political ideology which has the central principle of ¡§communal or communist ownership¡¨ of all property and therefore the abolition of private property. Democracy is a form of government in which the people vote, have a representative government and via these representatives ¡§govern themselves¡¨. During the period between 1961 to 1963, Nikita S. Khrushchev represented Communism and ruled Russia, while John F. Kennedy embodied democracy and lead America. The two leaders differed in their foreign policies as is evident by the Berlin Wall incident and the Cuban missile crisis, but both were somewhat radical in their domestic policies.
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was first secretary of the Soviet Communist party from 1953 to 1964 and effective leader of the USSR from 1956 (premier from 1958) to 1964. He was born on April 17th, 1894, in the village of Kalinovka, Kursk province. As a young boy, Khrushchev worked long hours in the coal mines. Khrushchev seemed to be a revolutionist from a young age as he organized several strikes and in 1918 he joined the Bolshevik party and fought in the Civil War. Afterward, he was sent by the party to a technical institute to learn more about Marxism.
Khrushchev rose steadily up the party ladder, always...

...popular with the Russian people who blame him for the loss of Soviet power.
But, as Gorbachev has replied to those who shout abuse at him: "Remember, I am the one who gave you the right to shout."
When he came to power in 1985, Gorbachev tried to discipline the Soviet people as a way to overcome economic stagnation. When discipline failed to solve the problem, he launched perestroika ("restructuring"). And when bureaucrats continually thwarted his orders, he used glasnost, or open discussion and democratisation. But once glasnost let people say what they thought, many people said: "We want out."
By December 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Gorbachev's foreign policy, which he called "new thinking", also contributed to the Cold War's end. Gorbachev said that security was a game from which all could benefit through co-operation. Rather than try to build as many nuclear weapons as possible, he proclaimed a doctrine of "sufficiency", holding only a minimal number for protection.
He also believed that Soviet control over an empire in Eastern Europe was costing too much and providing too little benefit and that the invasion of Afghanistan had been a costly disaster.
By the summer of 1989, East Europeans were given more freedom. Gorbachev refused to sanction the use of force to put down demonstrations. By November, the Berlin Wall had fallen.
Some of these events stemmed from Gorbachev's miscalculations. After all, he wanted to reform...

...﻿Ben Pockros
November 11, 2014
Professor Knapp
History of the ColdWar- Essay 2
Russian Roulette:
Gambling with Khrushchev
According to Robert Kennedy, “The fourteen people involved [in American responses to the Cuban Missile Crisis] were very significant—bright, able, dedicated people, all of whom had the greatest affection for the US . . . If six of them had been President of the US, I think that the world might have been blown up.”1 The Cuban Missile Crisis was delicate. Although tension between the US and USSR had escalated in years past, this Latin America tango severely increased the likelihood of nuclear warfare. Newly inaugurated President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev became locked in a lethal match of chess—countering each other with nuclear threats and strategic position. Both leaders were in check. Initially, President Kennedy embarrassed himself with his inability to contain communism and nuclear supplies in Cuba. But ultimately, and with great risk, in response to domestic and political pressure, and his regrettable Bay of Pigs decision, Kennedy stood a firm ground against Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and avoided nuclear war.
On the eve of Kennedy’s inauguration on January 20th, 1961, it appeared the two countries were finally heading towards a détente. Soviet Premier Khrushchev was the new face of the Soviet Union. He was responsible for de-Stalinization and for several...

...personal tensions are emphasised in Khrushchev’s memories but these retrospective sources may well be tainted by the split itself causes Khrushchev to regard Mao with hostility, meaning that it is difficult to separate cause and effect. It seems that the personal tensions between Mao and Khrushchev, however destructive they were to Sino-Soviet relations, were brought about by national interests.
It has also been argued that the role of national security was integral in the Sino-Soviet split. Both countries essentially followed traditional foreign policies, aiming to bolster national security and to expand their country’s influence, as demonstrated by Stalin’s demand that China pay for military assistance that they received during the Korean War 1950-53 and the fact that China sought a rapprochement with their ideological enemy, the USA. The continuity of the Soviet foreign policy with that of Tsarist Russia was heightened in George Kennan’s February 1946 long Telegram and is the reason that Soviet leaders were referred to as “Red Tsars”, pursuing traditional expansionist policies but dressing them in the language of communism. It seemed that protecting the security of their own nation was greater than the overall communist cause, and with such a single minded approach it is understandable that there would be a breakdown in relations.
However, although the concept of protecting national security is of great significance when observing the factors which led...

...was split into two opposing camps that, though they did not fight directly, were actively engaged in the ColdWar. This war did not end until the USSR broke apart in 1991. The ColdWar was both created and prolonged by the interconnected economic and ideological tensions of the East and West Blocs. The ideological systems of the two powers were viewed as being complete opposites in their goals and experienced increasing animosity toward each other. This in turn influenced the economic policies that drove the main powers of the ColdWar even further apart.
By far, the biggest contributor to the formation of the ColdWar was the fact that both sides believed the communist Soviet Union and the capitalist west ideologies were incompatible with each other. The essence of the ColdWar was seen as the opposition of communism and capitalism (Kishlansky, Geary, and O’Brien 874). This belief was present as soon as 1946, when Winston Churchill gave a speech characterizing the Soviet Union as a government that was capable of trying to “enforce totalitarian systems upon the free democratic world” (Churchill 303). He also contrasted the Soviet Union as a state where control was “enforced upon the common people by… police governments,” while the U.S. and Great Britain embodied “the great principles of freedom and the rights of man”...

...revolutionaries? Who became Fidel and Raul Castro’s hero for having struck a blow at European colonialism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis#Nasser_exploits_the_superpower_rivalry
Suez crisis
gamal abdel nasser in Egypt
On October 29, 1956, Israeli armed forces pushed into Egypt toward the Suez Canal after Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-70) nationalized the canal in July of that same year, initiating the Suez Crisis. The Israelis soon were joined by French and British forces, which nearly brought the Soviet Union into the conflict, and damaged their relationships with the United States. In the end, the British, French and Israeli governments withdrew their troops in late 1956 and early 1957.
http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/suez-crisis
4) Explain why the Mikoyan visit to cuba signified for the US “a long step toward the breaking of remaining links between the Government of Cuba and the american family nations.”
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06/d461
http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/franqui2.htm
In the early days of February, Anastas Mikoyan, vice-prime minister of the Soviet Union, came to Cuba. Fidel Castro, Raúl, Che Guevara, and President Dorticós met him at the Havana airport. He was given a huge reception and an extended tour of the island-with Fidel at his side-which lasted for weeks. A major topic was the Soviet Union's purchase of Cuban sugar and our purchase of...

...also marked an end to the ColdWar. The Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to the end of decades-long hostility between North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact, which had been the defining feature of the ColdWar.
Many former Soviet republics have retained close links with Russia and formed multilateral organizations such as the Eurasian Economic Community, the Union State, the Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, and the Eurasian Union to enhance economic and security cooperation.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) formally ceased to exist on 26 December 1991 by declaration no. 142-H of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union,[1] acknowledging the independence of the twelve republics of the Soviet Union, and creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). On the previous day, 25 December 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned, declaring his office extinct, and handed over the Soviet nuclear missile launching codes to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. That same evening at 7:32 P.M. the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the Russian tricolor. In the previous weeks, 11 of the 12 soviet republics had signed the Alma-Ata Protocol formally establishing the CIS and declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.[2][3] The dissolution of the state...

...The ColdWar With the aim of preventing East Germans from seeking asylum in the West, the East German government in 1961 began constructing a system of concrete and barbed-wire barriers between East and West Berlin. This Berlin Wall endured for nearly thirty years, a symbol not only of the division of Germany but of the larger conflict between the Communist and non-Communist worlds. The Wall ceased to be a barrier when East Germany ended restrictions on emigration in November 1989. The Wall was largely dismantled in the year preceding the reunification of Germany. The victorious Allies agreed to give most of Eastern Germany to Poland and the USSR, and then divide the rest into four zones of occupation. However, they could not agree of whether or how to reunite the four zones. "As ColdWar tensions grew, stimulated in part by the German situation itself, the temporary dividing line between the Soviet zone in the East and the British, French, and U.S. zones in the West hardened into a permanent boundary. In 1949, shortly after the Western powers permitted their zones to unite and restore parliamentary democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Russians installed a puppet regime of German Communists in the East, creating the German Democratic Re-public."(Niewyk, 1995) According to Galante (1965, p.vii) "a city is the people who live in it. Berlin is 3,350,000 people in twenty boroughs. A rich city of factories, an...